Svitlana lived under occupation in her native Kherson. She remembers well how on February 24, 2022, near Antonivskyi Bridge, she saw columns of tanks and armored personnel carriers moving across the bridge. That’s how she realized that a full-scale war had begun. The city was quickly surrounded, and it became impossible to leave. Svitlana’s daughter and two grandchildren tried to leave the city three times through Zaporizhzhia, but faced shelling and were forced to return. After Ukrainian troops liberated Kherson, the russians began to shell the city very heavily, and her house near Antonivskyi Bridge was destroyed.